Friday, March 29, AD 2024 6:42am

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES: 5-4 Supreme Court Mandates Gay Marriage Nationally

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How wrong you were Alex.

In a decision which completes the transition of the Supreme Court to a super legislature, the Court today mandated gay marriage across the nation.  Justice Scalia’s dissent, shorn of footnotes and legal citations to aid in reading by non-attorneys, notes that the Court is a threat to American democracy:

 

JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, dissenting. I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full.  I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me.  The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.

Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws.  So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me.  Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. 

The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention.  This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

I

Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views. Americans considered the arguments and put the question to a vote. The electorates of 11 States, either directly or through their representatives, chose to expand the traditional definition of marriage. Many more decided not to.1 Win or lose, advocates for both sides continued pressing their cases, secure in the knowledge that an electoral loss can be negated by a later electoral win. That is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work. 

The Constitution places some constraints on self-rule— constraints adopted by the People themselves when they ratified the Constitution and its Amendments.  Forbidden are laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts,”  denying “Full Faith and Credit” to the “public Acts” of other States, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing the right to keep and bear arms, authorizing unreasonable searches and seizures, and so forth.  Aside from these limitations, those powers “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” can be exercised as the States or the People desire. These cases ask us to decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment contains a limitation that requires the States to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. Does it remove that issue from the political process?

Of course not.  It would be surprising to find a prescription regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since, as the author of today’s opinion reminded us only two years ago (in an opinion joined by the same Justices who join him today):

“[R]egulation of domestic relations is an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States.”

“[T]he Federal Government, through our history, has deferred to state-law policy decisions with respect to domestic relations.”

But we need not speculate.  When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue.

But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law.  Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,” thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect. That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dissenting dimensions . . . . ”One would think that sentence would continue: “. . . and therefore they provided for a means by which the People could amend the Constitution,” or perhaps “. . . and therefore they left the creation of additional liberties, such as the freedom to marry someone of the same sex, to the People, through the never-ending process of legislation.”  But no.  What logically follows, in the majority’s judge-empowering estimation, is: “and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”  The “we,” needless to say, is the nine of us.  “History and tradition guide and discipline [our] inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.” Thus, rather than focusing on the People’s understanding of “liberty”—at the time of ratification or even today—the majority focuses on four “principles and traditions” that, in the majority’s view, prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution consisting of one man and one woman.

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.  Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant.  Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City.  Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States.  Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation. 

II

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.  The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds— minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly— could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.”  These Justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.  It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.  “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.” (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms?  And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.)  Rights, we are told, can “rise . . . from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.”  (Huh? How can a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives [whatever that means] define [whatever that means] an urgent liberty [never mind], give birth to a right?)  And we are told that, “[i]n any particular case,” either the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause “may be thought to capture the essence of [a] right in a more accurate and comprehensive way,” than the other, “even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right.”  (What say?  What possible “essence” does substantive due process “capture” in an “accurate and comprehensive way”?  It stands for nothing whatever, except those freedoms and entitlements that this Court really likes. And the Equal Protection Clause, as employed today, identifies nothing except a difference in treatment that this Court  really dislikes. Hardly a distillation of essence.  If the opinion is correct that the two clauses “converge in the identification and definition of [a] right,” that is only because the majority’s likes and dislikes are predictably compatible.) I could go on.  The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational popphilosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis.

* * *

Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall.  The Judiciary is the “least dangerous” of the federal branches because it has “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm” and the States, “even for the efficacy of its judgments.”  With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.

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DJ Hesselius
DJ Hesselius
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 8:54am

I would assume polygamy will be next.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 8:59am

My thoughts exactly DJ. The contours of the slippery slope have long been visible.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:07am

The contours of the slippery slope have long been visible.

But Tom, don’t you know slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies?

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution?’ – Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, 2003.

Oh. Wait.

Alan
Alan
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:10am

Has God turned his back on this once blessed land?

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:19am

“Has God turned his back on this once blessed land?”

No. Humans have turned their back of God. Now, what will we with God do and, probably, suffer as a result?

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:21am

That should read “backs on”

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:22am

We learn today that 600,000 men died in order that the 13th and 14th amendments can now be used to sacranentalize sodomy as an act beneficial for the survival of society. We have dishonored ourselves, our ancestors, our culture, our traditions, and the noble dead. Lord have mercy on us.

The majority opinion is chilling as it makes a fist in glove reference to the right of the religious community to continue to advocate (but clearly not in the public square) and teach our children (but likely not others). Roberts picked up on the use of language replacing free exercise of religion. This is a manifesto for the left. Tax status of the Church–gone. Accreditation of Church schools–gone. Church teachings as hate speech–institutionalized. I blame this on CO2 and global warming. It’s interrelated don’t you know.

Paul W Primavera
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:24am

Polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia, etc – the entire horrid putrid lot of sexual perversion – will be losed upon us. I hope this can be resolved without recourse to civil war, but I fear not. Liberal progressive Democrats will use this to begin open active persecution of Christians, and I fear but hope not that only a Maccabean response can stop them. These people are utterly, totally and completely evil and depraved.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:24am

I would assume polygamy will be next.

You’re assuming logical consistency applies. The disreputable Mr. Sailer put it thus: “It’s a popularity contest. Mormon polygamists are extremely unpopular, so no one is going to do anything for them”. Legal decisions like this may make use of a particular (deadly) idiom, but they reflect elements of elite culture, the culture of the bar, and the intersection of the two in the appellate judiciary.

Here’s the business: the self-understanding of the legal profession (and, really, of the professional-managerial element generally) is no longer compatible with free and popular government. A couple of outcomes seem possible. One is a continuing slide into political pantomime until our institutions are as rococo and divorced from popular sentiment as those of the Venitian Republic. Another is what Gottfried Dietze called a diffidatio the result of which is that our legal, academic, and media Bourbons are put in their place, at considerable cost in blood and treasure. Just what we all want when we are facing an ascendant China.

See Conrad Black: the political class in this country has flubbed every issue of the post-Cold War period bar welfare reform (and, in a selection of loci, crime control). Now we have elite figures who want to trash what achievements have been had in these areas as well (Obama, di Blasio, and the dolt soon to be inaugurated as Mayor of Philadelphia). We have a bad and incompetent elite without a trace of a public spirit. However slipping-clutch was the political order prior to 1961 and however many rogues like Lyndon Johnson were abroad in it, you could not say that of the political class of that era.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:27am

“Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.” – Agent Smith, The Matrix

Alan
Alan
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:32am

Will churches be mandated by law to perform same sex weddings? Will they lose their tax exempt status if they refuse? Anyone.

Arminius
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:40am

The magnitude of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th order of effects of today’s decision are staggering in their possibility and probability.

However, the supporters of this decision will become more confident and cocky in their victory. They will overplay their hand. There is opportunity to be had there.

The soft tyranny we have allowed these past decades hardened today.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:40am

Welcome to tyranny. In Casey v Planned parenthood, Kennedy was a turncoat. In that decision, O’Connor (joined by catholic Kennedy) scolded us saying the debate must now and henceforth cease as to whether killing an infant in the womb is a fundamental right.

In this decision, Scalia rightly points out that the debate taking place in the states is democratic process as it should be. This decision, like Casey, is an expression of tyrannical sentiments. The Court has trashed the 1st Amendment by trashing religion as a bastard of democracy, and by declaring debate, ie speech, over this subject as now concluded. You now have no right to try to persuade your state legislature about the merits of your position. some may love being governed by global authorities, and so this decision is good practice for the rest of us.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:43am

“But Tom, don’t you know slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies?”

Of course they are logical fallacies, because slipperiness can be arrested by willpower, but the slope remains in the minds of its adherents, always leading to the desired outcome even if in reality it is not inevitable. A prime example is gun control: intellectual will has ended the ‘slipperiness’ of the argument that the right to keep and bear arms is not an individual right, but the desired outcome remains. Or to put it another way:
Of course slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies, until they aren’t.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:44am

Alan – Not for a while. My bet is it’ll go a little differently. They’ll be told that they can hold or refuse whatever religious services they wish, but they’re obligated to perform civil weddings for anyone or for no one. A lot of libertarians will support it, as will Christians who’ve decided to just bow out of the culture wars. That won’t be enough for the activists, though. They’re not looking for rights, they’re looking for acceptance. (They’re looking for a loud public voice of acceptance to drown out the little inner voice telling them they’re wrong.) Maybe the tax-exemption will be broken some other way, like through a “separation of church and state” argument or a local zoning dispute taken national. Adoption services will be long gone by then.

None of those things are inevitable, but we’re going to be told simultaneously that they are inevitable, and that it’s all in our heads.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:47am

“Will churches be mandated by law to perform same sex weddings? Will they lose their tax exempt status if they refuse? Anyone.”

Not yet. First you need:
1) Religious-based colleges will be forced to perform them
2) Churches in other democracies like the UK and Mexico will be forced to perform them, and will offer only token resistance

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 9:50am

“Mormon polygamists are extremely unpopular, so no one is going to do anything for them”

And that’s why we have polyamory.

trackback
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:00am

[…] It Is Time to Kneel Down and Pray For Our Nation – Father John Zuhlsdorf, Fr. Z’s Blog Obergefell v. Hodges: 5-4 Supreme Court Mandates Gay ‘Marriage’ – Don. R. McClarey […]

DJ Hesselius
DJ Hesselius
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:08am

Art: “Mormon polygamists are extremely unpopular, so no one is going to do anything for them”

Oh, man! I forgot about them. I was thinking of Islam. Islam is very popular. And if you’re an immigrant, especially an undocumented one, so much the better. Granted, a lot of Latinos are supposedly Catholic, but not always it would seem.
.
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/18021/20140726/latino-muslims-are-one-of-the-fastest-growing-populations-in-the-u-s.htm
.
But I was also reading recently about polyamory too. There is some commune that practices it. Oh! and how lovely it is for the children!! (Alas, I cannot find the article online right now.)

bill bannon
bill bannon
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:11am

. Religious Catholic bakers and photographers and reception hall owners who see this area as fraught with giving scandal have a very tough road ahead and I hope Rome can give them guidance out loud.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:19am

Don’t forget, everyone, have fish for lunch. We’re in this for the long haul.

Don L
Don L
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:28am

I predict that religious freedom (under Obamacare) will fall next and the UN will–this fall–become the world’s main power (regardless of how cleverly the big powers pretend otherwise and word things)
This climate encyclical will play no small part is the coming disaster.
Why? Because no one dare stop them, and most institutions–including the Church–find no immorality in restoring Caesar to the Emperor’s throne

Paul W Primavera
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:34am

“…most institutions–including the Church–find no immorality in restoring Caesar to the Emperor’s throne.”
.
Revelation 13
.
1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed the beast with wonder. 4 Men worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
.
5 And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months; 6 it opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and tongue and nation, 8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain. 9 If any one has an ear, let him hear:
.
10 If any one is to be taken captive,
to captivity he goes;
if any one slays with the sword,
with the sword must he be slain.
Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:34am

Don—my reading of the Roberts decision yesterday was that a majority of the court doesn’t want to hear any more appeals on obamacare……and so I agree with you.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:43am

Let’s not forget the work of the great Catholic statesmen Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, whose vicious attacks on Robert Bork indirectly led to the nomination of Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Thanks to these Catholic Democrats abortion rights became more entrenched (via Casey) and gay marriage became a national right.

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:45am

I’m going to look at the bright side. If things aren’t reversed and this all winds up being the new order, I won’t have to worry about geriatric treatments under Obamacare.

Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:47am

Still think you and your fellow Republicans are going to win in 2015, Don? Your Republican buddies have caved in on everything, including this. America 2015 R.I.P. GOP 2015 R.I.P. Cause of death: destroying it’s credibility by giving in to every liberal trend that came along.

Mary Fran
Mary Fran
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 10:50am

Another tragedy in a long string of tragedies in our country. Not unexpected, but still very sad. Another step on the way to the destruction of this once great country. The Supreme Court has NO business making law. These justices will have a lot of accounting to do on their last day when they face Almighty God. Even if they think they are not accountable to right and justice here on earth, there will be no escaping it at the end. And no excuses will work for them in that High Court. The REALLY Supreme Court.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 11:56am

Donald R McClarey wrote, “In years past Justices would not have dreamed of a major decision hanging upon a one vote margin. They would want as many votes as possible prior to doing something like this…”

And sometimes with rather curious results. A case, Minersville School District v Gobitis [310 US 586 (1940)] that was decided by a majority of eight to one, was overruled three years later in West Virginia School Board of Education v Barnette [319 US 624 (1943)] by a majority of six to three. Of the six, three of the Justices (Black, Douglas & Murphy JJ) had changed their minds, two (Jackson & Ritledge JJ) were new appointments and one was the former lone dissident (Stone CJ, formerly Stone J).

Hardly surprising that in Jones v Opelika [319 US 584 (1942)] one finds Roberts J complaining that, in some six years, the court had fourteen times reversed one or more of its earlier decisions, many of them recent. He observed that such decisions tended “to bring adjudications of this tribunal into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only. I have no assurance, in view of current decisions, that the opinion announced today may not shortly be repudiated and overruled by justices who deem they have new light on the subject.”

Rosey
Rosey
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 12:19pm

(posting this from another blog:
Ticked Parent: “… Making homosexual “marriage” legal will not make it normal, but it will add to the confusion of the times. And it will add to the downward spiral of our civilization. But Chesterton’s prophecy remains: We will not be able to destroy the family. We will merely destroy ourselves by disregarding the family.””

guest to Ticked Parent: Great and relevant Chesterton quote.
The Church’s teaching on why there is a prohibition on genetically altering embryos and why non-natural procreation is bad for families is also relevant–with the creation of genetically three-parent children just on the horizon, (for more detail see the “Mary Meets Dolly” blog) the three-way marriage (based on Kennedy’s bizarre reasoning) is sure to pass constitutional muster.

Thomas
Thomas
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 12:46pm

1. Polygamy is certainly the next thing.
2. Persecution too, as the motive is a painful conscience to those who embrace a lie, to shut down anyone who speaks of conjugal marriage.

But the thing that has happened today, is, as Donald R. McClarey states eloquently: “The hubris is almost as stunning as their reduction of the Constitution to a pile of clay that can be made into anything by 5 Justices.”
Polygamy and Persecution are one thing, but the above could mean the end of the Republic.

Hmmmmm
Hmmmmm
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 1:21pm

Michael Paterson-Seymour, if it were only that simple. There is a complacency in contemporary Americans to take Supreme Court cases as seriously as they do a sports match. Pick a side, follow that side through the media until game day and there will be no reversal or reconsideration of whatever happens on the field of play. “Championships are forever” is a mentality that has seeped into our popular understanding of the law, our courts (especially the Supreme Court) and how our government works, or should. While I am sure there will be those of us, especially people on blogs like this, with a different opinion; I do not expect resistance or questioning of the court’s decision to have any effect on our political or media classes anytime soon- “leave me alone, the court has decided” is a very popular sentiment.

Mary De Voe
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 1:43pm

Alan : “Will churches be mandated by law to perform same sex weddings? Will they lose their tax exempt status if they refuse? Anyone”
.
Churches are held in trust for all future generations. Gifts, donations and behests are tax free items. Church parishioners have paid their fair share of taxes as ordinary citizens. It would be taxation without representation two taxes, one vote. The church has five trustees who represent the physical plant and deal with the state. They have paid their taxes. Taxing the God, atheism denies, is going to be interesting. Unless a person is invited by his willingness to enter into God’s House, the government agent from the IRS is not welcome and may not trespass against the parish property. It is in the law. The IRS agent has no business on private property of the church, a non-profit. I wish them HELL if they try. The IRS agents may join the sodomites in HELL. Hillary Clinton said: “Deep seated Cultural Codes, Religious beliefs have to be changed”, about human sacrifice. After Hillary Clinton changes the existence of HELL to non-existence, then Hillary may get my vote. Go Hillary to a non-existent HELL.
.
Since Roe v. Wade made human sacrifice available, the human conscience and the immortal soul is denied. The jack-boot corruption may only be put off by God. The United State of the United Nations, one nation without God, dispensable, corruptible and violable.

Mary De Voe
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 1:46pm

“Polygamy and Persecution are one thing, but the above could mean the end of the Republic.”
.
The Republic ended when the Person of God was denied His civil rights. Human sacrifice followed and now, the devil has been given free reign.

Franco
Franco
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 1:46pm

This ruling is not about equality. It is about bringing
Christian churches in America under the control of
the state. The sodomites now have been granted
by the state the power to redefine or destroy
Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular
in America.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 2:03pm

Your Republican buddies have caved in on everything, including this.
==
They’re astoundingly ineffectual. You can float two explanations for that. One propagated by Robert Stacy McCain (who is a lapsed newspaper editor and certainly knows a great many people around Capitol Hill) is that a critical mass of Republican legislators have no intention of accomplishing anything because they are basically cat’s paws of donor interests and payola sucking crooks and anything they emphasize will be ‘trivial messaging items’. Explanation two is that gatekeepers within the Republican Party are being blackmailed. Given the Hastert and IRS scandals, that possibility has entered the realm of the reasonable.
==
What gets you is the culture, and that implicates much of the public as well as our current crop of politicians. Gerald Ford was taken to task a generation ago for unseemly buckraking (the bulk of which, I believe, was ploughed into his presidential library), but a sum contextually equivalent to Ford’s 1977 haul could be picked up by the Clintons with a couple-dozen speeches. The complaints against Ford concerned appearance fees and corporate directorships. Money-laundering, influence-peddling and the tsunami of payola were not part of the bill of particulars. This distaff side of this pair of greasy crooks is the stated choice of north of 40% of the electorate to occupy the president’s chair.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 2:35pm

“Polygamy and Persecution are one thing, but the above could mean the end of the Republic.”

At this point I would still assume that the real threats to the Republic come from without and not within. For the last century our country has been very good (not perfect, but very good) in foreseeing both threats and the proper measures to take against those threats. One might be excused if, when contemplating the pursuit of happiness and the pleasure principle, that we are losing our ability to foresee threats. You reap what you sow, and if we sow an unreal vision of life then life will eventually make us pay up.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 2:51pm

Speaking of threats from without, in the past decade the Supreme Court made a paid of rulings that did impair our ability to deal with such things. I don’t feel like searching for the case names or the years, but in the rough these are:

1) The Arizona law dealing with illegal immigration – the Court not only struck it down, but introduced language that said a state has no right to self defense in the absence of Federal action. So the majority basically said that states are no longer sovereign entities.

2) In one of the several rulings over detained terrorists, the Court in effect ruled that the U.S. military must now practice on the battlefield the evidentiary procedures police use in criminal arrests, and that failure to do so could result in prisoners taken on the battlefield being released. So the majority basically said it could assume commander-in-chief responsibilities to itself.

These were the kind of rulings that Hamilton had in mind when he made his “least dangerous branch” comment. His comment was based on the idea that it was permissible for elected leaders to tell the Court to take a hike. Who ever did, outside of racists such as Andrew Jackson or George Wallace?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 2:53pm
cpola
cpola
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 2:59pm

Sad day for America.
But polygamy has nothing to do with it.
.
And so one of the names of the Lord our God is:

The God of Abraham (polygamist)
The God of Isaac (monogamist)
The God of Jacob (polygamist)

So if their polygamy was not abhorrent in the sight of God who are we to decide otherwise? Is that not serious presumption? Is that not serious disrespect for these Patriarchs whom – as Christians – we owe so much? Is it then not absolutely scandalous to equate polygamy with such grave sins as adultery, fornication and sodomy?
Readmore:
http://popeleo13.com/pope/2015/05/31/category-archive-message-board-349-what-is-man-4/

Thomas
Thomas
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 3:19pm

Marriage hasn’t been redefined, it’s America that’s been redefined. The Constitution means nothing now except what a majority of 5 of 9 lawyers can make out of it. No longer law, but conjecture.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 3:28pm

This decision essentially does for same-sex civil marriage what Roe v. Wade did for abortion. If Roe was intended to “end the debate” on abortion, it certainly didn’t have that effect. If the pro-aborts were hoping Roe would kill off the pro-life movement or drive all discussion of abortion off the public media, they were surely disappointed. Although there are and will certainly continue to be attempts to marginalize, silence or hamper the pro-life movement (e.g. HHS mandate, compelling religious hospitals/health providers to refer for abortions), the pro-life movement is far from dead, more than 40 years after Roe. So I wouldn’t start writing obituaries for traditional marriage just yet, either.

JTLiuzza
JTLiuzza
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 3:36pm

Orderly secession. No blood letting necessary.

Us poor rubes who “cling to their bibles and guns” are conveniently geographically proximate.

I’m tired of having filth foisted upon us by leftist elites in the northeast and west coast. Time for a divorce. Let them have their sodom and gomorrah unfettered by the objections of the “red states.”

It’s a win win.

D. N.
D. N.
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 4:01pm

These supreme court justices so disgust me, I can not even look at their faces. They wear the smirks of the devil.

Don ?
Don ?
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 4:02pm

I wonder how fast the Church will comply–unless the character of its leaders changes radically?
I expect a lot of nonsense talk (It’s okay now) as they fold, as we did in Connecticut when they put in plan B.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 4:18pm

Art, it is precisely Iran that I had in mind when I wrote about us not being able to see threats. Why should I care about it when my two husbands can pick up the cannabis at the store on the way home from work?

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